


the sharp compassion of the healer's art

by glittersnipe



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: F/F, Genderswap, THEY'RE ALL LADIES, bonus mycroft, everything is ladies and nothing hurts, i just like femlock a lot, sherlock is a lady mycroft is a lady joan is a lady
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-04
Updated: 2013-06-04
Packaged: 2017-12-13 23:08:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/829901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glittersnipe/pseuds/glittersnipe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She knows what people think: she's a puppy at the heels of her master, she's doing it for money or love or both. And it's true, maybe, that she's doing this for love: not Sherlock's love, but her own, for the thrill that comes of knowing and outdoing yourself, of creating coherence in a world sorely lacking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the sharp compassion of the healer's art

i. 

She checks the address again and pictures Miss Sherlock Holmes: heroin-skinny, wormily pale, lank institutional hair, expensive dental reconstruction. Hand-made scarves and sandals, her habit picked up along with some "tribal" jewellery while she was kicking around in Phnom Penh, spending daddy's dime. Even the name conjures up bourgeois bohemian; a woman called "Sherlock" sounds like she knits her own sweaters out of cat-hair and eats lumpy vegan casseroles and talks about reiki or "authenticity" endlessly. Joan does try not to judge, at least nowadays, but she's always felt a certain disdain for rich hippies, for their blithe entitled carelessness. Carelessness frequently being the first step toward pain, deliberately inflicted or otherwise; Joan hates carelessness.

She shakes her head and promptly thinks what the fuck when a woman whose face is more metal than flesh walks past her out of the brownstone. Up the stairs, (multiple?) televisions noisy as needy children (unexpected -- the smug "oh, I don't have a TV" type, surely?), half-expecting to find her high already, that was surely a drop-off, she could practically smell the addiction on Miss Bauhaus. Surely not a relapse before she's even made Sherlock's acquaintance? The brownstone is in appalling condition for such a beautiful building, dust everywhere, dark-stained wood absolutely filthy, more carelessness there, worse even than most of the men she's companion-ed, which is really saying something. 

Through the door, and Sherlock Holmes turns around. Joan's first thought is fuck and then her second thought is fuck fuck fuck and her third is fuck she's gorgeous. She's the opposite of what Joan was expecting: where heroin addicts are usually skinny, enervated stalks, flowers with their heads lopped off, Sherlock Holmes is sleekly muscled, round-hipped, tall, sensual even as she stares at Joan and mockingly tells her that she loves her with a mad glint in her eye. Her dark hair is in a sloppy knot atop her head, long wisps framing her face, a kind of light kimono tied at her waist. Her feet are bare and there is a network of bruises up one pale shin. Joan is trying very hard not to look at her breasts, but Sherlock's robe is divulging rather an impressive amount of cleavage. She is not wearing a bra. The kimono is light enough that Joan can tell both nipples are pierced. A tattoo curls its way down her bare forearm. Patrician nose, thin lips, huge eyes darkly circled by bruised-looking hollows. Sherlock Holmes studies her, then turns to check her recitation and Joan feels a flare of heat inside. Tries not to think of what's underneath that robe. 

The people she helps are still clearly victims, still struggling with the carelessness of the world, with the failure of their most beloved coping mechanism and further failure to cope with that loss, struggling under the weight of these losses stacked one atop another endlessly. She's used to the usual manifestations: nihilism, depression, the brokenness of the addict betrayed by their best thinking and their best friend. But there's something else here, a kind of strange intense hunger, that intrigues her. A minute into their first meeting and Sherlock Holmes has already captivated her. Months later, she'll think about this moment (usually calling herself a fool, dialing Sherlock's number and cursing the crazy bitch for all she's worth) and, well. She didn't know, exactly, what she was letting herself in for, but a part of her recognised that glint in Sherlock's eyes, and a part of her wanted in.

ii.

"She's gorgeous," Joan whines, hanging her head over her coffee cup. She's meeting up with Allie, a fling-turned-friend from med school, a monthly tradition. "Like, super gorgeous. Terrible personality, a complete know-it-all, arrogant as hell and oh my god like the worst roommate ever and the noise, Allie, at three in the morning! Three! But she's really, really hot."

"Is she into girls?" Allie asks, nibbling biscotti. The late-autumn sun slants over them both. Allie and Joan were together for about a month, give or take, before calling it quits. The chemistry they'd had as friends had just failed to translate to the bedroom, although it's been so long at this point that Joan's even thinking fondly of the lacklustre mediocrity that had been their sex-life. She thinks of Sherlock in that robe, how her breasts had pressed against the thin material, how she never seems to wear a fucking bra like ever, and groans, shaking her head. 

"I can't even go there, Allie, she's my client, I am paid to be her confidante and her companion, I shouldn't even be doing this."

"But is she into girls?" Allie persists, dogged as ever.

"She had some kind of dominatrix over right before I arrived, so yeah, I think so. I haven't asked. It's not professional, I shouldn't even really be discussing this with you," Joan says, slumping on the table. 

"Wait, what?"

"It's, uh. She's... An unusual woman."

When Joan lets herself into the brownstone, Sherlock is sitting on the floor, burning lengths of rope with a Zippo. It smells disgusting. Jeans with the knees ripped out, bare feet, tattoos down her arms, hair loose down her back. She stretches. Her armpits are stubbly. Anyone else would look a mess. 

"You didn't tell me you were bisexual, Watson," she says, tone halfway between smug and patronising. Joan stops, clenches her fists. Sherlock, for all that she's gorgeous, is a pain in her ass; she's still at that arrogant stage of recovery where she's desperate to prove that she still knows best, she's made it back to solid ground, that her best thinking didn't bring her quite as low as it did. She's still burning lengths of rope, playing casual. There is something oddly sweet in her attempts to impress Joan, even when it starts to get really fucking annoying. Like now.

"How did you figure that out?"

"Your hair," Sherlock says, "You pulled it back, you think it looks better pulled off your face, you did the same with your date with that man awhile ago, and I assumed 'Allie' was female, which you have now confirmed. Must be an ex, too, but not a recent one, you wouldn't have worn that shirt otherwise. Are you two friends?"

"How," Joan says, "do you do that?"

"It's not something you share, mmm? Your sexual orientation, I mean."

"I don't not-share it," Joan says, fighting the urge to let her hair back down, though that would be yet another tell. She's got Sherlock's attention now, though, which feels more gratifying than it really should. "It's just not strictly relevant." She feels like a particularly interesting slide in a microscope. 

"I knew anyway," Sherlock says, shrugging and standing up. She stretches and pads into the kitchen, her hair falling in loose, ratty curls down her back. It looks like she hasn't showered in awhile. 

"And, um, you?" Joan says, following her, trying to be delicate. It's her job, to know her client, to foster trust, but Sherlock gives her that look, the "my privacy is being invaded" look she gives about fifty times a day.

"Labels are boring," she says eventually, opening a jar and picking out lumps of nata de coco with her fingers, a habit that drives Joan up the wall. 

"Are you fourteen? Labels are useful. If you don't want to tell me, you don't have to."

She starts making tea, ignoring Sherlock, who paces around the kitchen like a jumpy cat. Counts down: ten, nine, eight, and bang on one Sherlock says, "I don't, um. Care. But I like women more."

"There," Joan says, "I knew anyway, and if you'll excuse me," and she swishes past Sherlock, who looks disconcerted that her grand announcement has not had the effect she apparently intended it to. 

iii.

Gregson tends to alternate between respect and a kind of avuncular concern with Sherlock; he wants to take care of her even as she dazzles him again and again. Joan understands the feeling. As intimidating, as cold and arrogant and frighteningly intelligent as Sherlock can be, there is something exposed about her. Like a skinned knee, a raw muscle twitching beneath the scalpel. She shouts where she should whisper, needles where she should wheedle, threatens where flirtation would have the greater effect. 

Joan was like that too, before med school and interviews and brunches; before she sanded down her rough edges and learned to focus, to fix only what she has the power to fix. For all her love of detail, Sherlock's an abstractor in her deepest heart; Joan's praxis and pragmatics. She's not a people-pleaser, never has been, but flies and honey. She gets what she wants; she fixes what she can fix; she pours champagne down the sink and she tries to make amends for her failures. She brings coffee for Sherlock and she goes on her daily run and she gets her results the best way she knows how.

iv.

She comes downstairs to see Sherlock eating breakfast with the blonde twins. And yeah, okay, maybe she is a little more judgmental than she likes to admit to herself, and maybe some part of her is jealous, and weirdly betrayed in a way -- blonde, bubbly, conventionally pretty, identical twins, for God's sake, could you get any more Playboy Mansion? This is who the great intellectual chooses to spend her time with? Sherlock, who bitches about how no one can keep up with her, eating pancakes while the relative merits of the Kardashian clan are dissected across the table? 

She tells herself to shut up, annoyed; it's really none of her business what Sherlock does in the bedroom, or with whom. She's not going to judge anyone for $300 highlights; everyone's got their own priorities. But still. Twins?

"You're not happy," Sherlock says over a cup of coffee, one eyebrow raised, once the twins have gone.

"With you having incestuous threesomes? No, not particularly."

"Now, Joan," Sherlock begins in that pointedly urbane voice of hers that drives Joan absolutely insane, "they may not be rocket scientists, but--"

"Oh, for God's sake, Sherlock," Joan says, "Would it kill you to not be condescending for like three seconds, wondering about the ethics of incest is a normal thing to do, so don't try and make it like I'm just being petty or jealous." 

"Jealous, hmmm," Sherlock says, and fuck, she's so infuriating sometimes. She smiles broadly at Joan, knocks back her coffee. "Jealous."

"Oh, shut up," Joan says, then, realising she's actually angry, "Really, I know you like doing this thing where you're so bohemian and unconventional and everyone else is boring but having actual scruples and maybe not being okay with incest does not mean that I'm just not as urbane as the great Sherlock Holmes, okay? I get to have principles."

As she walks away, Sherlock is watching her intently, strangely as though a rare flower had suddenly dehisced itself before her: a stare like a scalpel, her mouth oddly joyful. She always looks so happy when she's been surprised.

v.

"In 28 days," she says, and she thinks about what that entails: nice comfy beige apartment, early nights, a week or two off before she goes back to Joan the Companion: stern, blandly friendly, armed with platitudes and pamphlets and her best intentions. Her face in the mirror every morning, convincing herself she's making a difference, making amends, making a change, making someone's life better.

"27," she says, and Sherlock shrugs, mutters, slumps on the sofa. Mocks the meetings, mocks her suggestions, but she won't quite meet her eye. 

"26."

You stubborn bitch, Joan thinks.

vi.

All her life, she's chased a certain thrill, a certain feeling, the click of a well-made box slotting together. That click was what she felt at her first clean incision, the first time she could face a cadaver without fear or nausea, her graduation, her career, her first operation. The comfort of knowledge, the network of sureties, the name of the bones and muscles knitted and sliding together harmonious, the final suture marking the end of a successful surgery. 

Following Sherlock around had made her feel stupid at first: playing attendant, watching her wield the scalpel but failing to see the incision, the wound, even the damn patient. Failing to see every little thing at first, until things slowly began to stand out to her: the shape of the blood-splatters, the failure to meet her eye, the liars' cadences. Beginning to see the threads of tenuous muscle linking each and every little thing, seeing, vaguely, the outlines of the outlines that could form a whole, that she could see, eventually, maybe. Feeling that thrill of knowledge, that joy of joining the broken and disparate, of creating by connection.

She knows what people think: she's a puppy at the heels of her master, she's doing it for money or love or both. And it's true, maybe, that she's doing this for love: not Sherlock's love, but her own, for the thrill that comes of knowing and outdoing yourself, of creating coherence in a world sorely lacking. And if part of her does want Sherlock's love, if part of her wishes they'd met at a different time, in a different place: it's because Sherlock feels that click too, because Sherlock feels that joy when the final suture's finished and the last clue slotted neatly into its place. It's because they are both looking for the scar where the surgery was botched, hoping to find the answers in all the ugliness.

Sherlock asks her to stay, finally, and she doesn't think about it at all before she says yes.

vii.

"Get dressed," Sherlock says, tossing her some clothes, "Mycroft is here."

"What?" 

"I didn't pick out knickers for you, sorry," Sherlock says, twisting her fingers. She delicately turns to give Joan her privacy. "Mycroft, my sister. She scheduled this months ago, I bloody forgot until she showed up and I'd fallen asleep on the floor and everything and she gave me that bloody look of hers and just bollocks it all."

"Sherlock," Joan says, more awake now, tugging her top on, "You have a sister?"

"Yes, and she's here in the bloody sitting room," Sherlock says, and then uncharacteristically slumps down onto Joan's bed, spreading herself out and groaning dramatically. Her tshirt is old and faded and rides up, exposing her tattooed stomach; Joan knows for a fact that she hasn't washed that particular pair of jeans for months. 

"A sister called Mycroft."

"If you were expecting her to be called something like Joan that says more about you," Sherlock sniffs.

Mycroft, downstairs, has the same patrician nose as her sister; beyond that, there little family resemblance. Where Sherlock's all rounded curves, heavy-breasted and small-waisted, Mycroft is simply round: round cheeks, chubby hands, possessing none of the striking physicality of her sister. Her suit is impeccably tailored, her smile manicured and pleasant. She oozes good breeding, dignity and bonhomie and a kind of placidity that Joan doesn't believe at all. 

"Sherlock, would you mind giving Ms Watson and I some time?"

"What?" Sherlock snaps. Next to Mycroft, her energy seems even more manic, her movements more erratic. 

"There's a lovely park down the road from you," Mycroft says delicately, "You could go take a nice walk, perhaps."

"But I--"

"Sherlock," Mycroft says, her tone only very slightly changed, her brow unruffled as the calmest of seas.

Sherlock leaves in a huff, knotting her scarf around her neck, clattering down the stairs.

"So, you aren't the sober companion any longer," Mycroft says, after the final thud has reverberated through the brownstone. "You're joining Sherlock as a detective."

"That's right, yes," Joan says. Mycroft smiles; everything about her radiates anodyne pleasantness, cuddly inconsequentiality. The very antithesis of Sherlock, except for a certain fleeting look around the eyes. Joan doesn't believe it for a damn second. 

"Is consulting detective-work that engaging then, Ms Watson?"

"I'm sorry?"

"It's just something of an unusual career-path, no? Surgeon, sober-companion, and now the consulting-partner of Sherlock Holmes." Mycroft is so blandly pleasant that the implication could almost be missed, but Joan -- well, Joan deduces too, for a living.

"Ms Holmes --"

"Mycroft. Please." Her blouse is a kind of dull rose-pink, like bathroom wallpaper. Her face is plump and pink and exquisitely made-up, perfect camouflage.

"Mycroft. I'm not totally sure what you're asking me here," Joan says, playing by the rules of engagement. 

"I worry about Sherlock. She's always been... something of a loose cannon, one might say. You've been marvellous for her, I haven't seen her this contented since that unfortunate business, but she's still recovering from her ordeal, you know. She's still very vulnerable." Mycroft stops, examines Joan for a second. The family resemblance is there, all right. "A vulnerable and extremely rich young woman, joined now by her sober companion turned, ah... Companion."

"I'm her partner," Joan says, and then, blushing, "her business partner I mean, not her partner partner."

"And yet you never displayed even the slightest interest in playing detective beforehand, no?" The look that Mycroft fixes her with is frankly terrifying. The calming motherly presence is totally gone.

"Excuse me?"

"Ms Watson. I'm not trying to cast aspersions of any kind. But I'm sure you see where my suspicions arise. I care for her deeply. I worry about her." Mycroft makes a gesture as though she wants to rub her eyes. "You didn't... See her. Before. It was extremely difficult. Very, very difficult to watch." She looks up. "She's my little sister. I let her slip before."

"I wouldn't," Joan says. Her throat aches, a little; Mycroft watches her intently. "I would never. I love this job. I love my life now. I love--"

Mycroft's eyebrows look as though they're about to fly off her forehead. Shit, Joan thinks. Shit shit shit. 

"You do," she says, finally, settling back in her couch. "And Sherlock...?"

"I'd rather not discuss this," Joan says, wondering when this became her life.

"Of course," Mycroft says, and then there is a tremendous bang and Sherlock comes thumping up the stairs. 

"You must have finished your interrogation by now," she says, flinging her coat on the ground (when Joan has told her a million damn times that there's a hook, Jesus, it's not like it's hard to remember). "I bought a rotisserie chicken," she adds. She's windswept, pink-cheeked, already on her way out of the room. Joan feels something throb and clench inside her.

"Quite," Mycroft says, standing, watching her with Sherlock's eyes. "Well, Ms Watson. Good luck in all your future endeavours."

viii.

But she wants, God, she wants. 

"I'm better with you, Watson," Sherlock says, eyes huge and hesitant, standing too close to her in a ratty tshirt, eyeliner smudged everywhere. She looks tired, a little scared. She holds her hand out, as though to touch Joan, then, thinking better of it, draws back into herself.

Joan wants more than anything than to touch her, too, but Sherlock's a recovering addict, she's unpredictable and arrogant and a nightmare to live with and would make the worst girlfriend in the world and fuck the sex would be amazing.

That night, she dreams of how it could have gone: her hand threaded through Sherlock's hair, knotting at the back of her neck. Pulling her tshirt over her head, pushing her to her knees. Sherlock's arrogance dissolved into something entirely new, her face flushed with lust, red and needy. She's seen those handcuffs lying around, seen the calibre of woman Sherlock engages, the (frankly ridiculous in Joan's opinion, but to each their own) complicated leather outfits crumpled on the floor, once or twice; she imagines Sherlock pliant and panting, naked while Joan is dressed, imagines her moaning around the word "please", imagines sliding a finger in her, feeling her slick and hot. Imagines making her beg.

She comes harder than she's come in a long time.

ix.

Four a.m. and she's woken by banging. Down the stairs and Sherlock is pacing back and forth. There's a box on the floor, papers spilled everywhere, the name Moriarty scrawled on the wall.

"Sherlock," Joan says. "When was the last time you got some sleep?"

"I don't --" Sherlock says, making a fist against her face, hitting the bridge of her nose, "I don't know, Watson, I don't fucking know, I don't know, I don't--" her fist, faster and faster, Joan running over shouting hey hey come on to grab her arm. Joan pulls her arm down, takes her by her shoulders. Sherlock is taller than her, broader. She smells like sweat. She's shaking. "Hey," Joan says, still holding onto her shoulders. Their chests are almost touching. Sherlock's eyes are huge and dark in the dim light. Her lower lip is trembling; she stares desperately into Joan's face, searching. 

Their foreheads touch. Sherlock tangles her hand in Joan's hair, pulling her closer, focusing only on what's in front of her. "I see it," she mumbles, "but I don't see it, I can see it but I can't, do you--" huffing out a shaky laugh, Joan smelling the staleness of her breath, "do you see, Joan, do you see, do you--" and then she leans into her, presses her body flush against Joan, her breasts pushed up against her, her mouth wet and hot, still searching. Her teeth on Joan's lip, one hand tangled in her hair, and Joan still holding her in place, holding her still --

"No," Joan says, breaking away. Sherlock jerks back as though she's been stung. Her mouth is shining and slick, her hair coming loose from its knot. Her chest is heaving. "I, ah," she says, "I'm sorry, I thought you wanted --"

"I do," Joan says, and God, she does, "but you're upset. I'm not going to be your escape, Sherlock."

"You do," Sherlock says, touching her index finger to the corner of Joan's mouth, very softly.

"But not like this."

Sherlock, staring at her, tracing her jaw, mapping the ridges of bone beneath the flesh. Her ragged fingernail sharp. Looking as though she wants to crawl inside Joan's head, curl up cradled in the crevices of her brain. 

"I can't turn it off," she tries to explain. "I can't make it go away."

"No," Sherlock says, closing her eyes. She sounds resigned. "Nothing can, no. I wish I could sleep."

"You can try, if you want," Joan says. "With me. Try sleeping. Just -- sleeping."

x.

She jerks awake early, unused to sharing her bed. Sherlock is lying next to her, staring at the ceiling, which is grey and pale and sad in the frail early-morning light. Her fingers are twisting in the sheets.

"How long have you been awake," Joan whispers, and Sherlock jerks away from her, startled out of her own head.

"I got about an hour," she says. She tries for a wry smile and fails miserably. She looks exhausted, all the bravado drained out of her, tired and sad. She rolls onto her side, moving close enough that Joan can see the livid purple circles beneath her eyes, the crow's feet around them.

"Sherlock," Joan says.

"I know," Sherlock stops, and then, hesitantly, "I know, I..."

"You know. You always know. What are you trying to tell me?"

"I know you're you," Sherlock says. "I mean. I know you're not an escape. I still... I still want to try. I want to try you. Try with you. If you still want."

It's possibly the worst declaration Joan's ever received. Sherlock is watching her intently, very still.

Fuck it, Joan thinks. She does want. She wants it all: Sherlock, tortoises, bees, the brownstone, coffee and late nights and deducing and connection. She wants the click of the well-made box.

"Okay," she says, and she leans over to kiss Sherlock, hesitant and slow at first, feeling the slide of Sherlock's lip beneath hers, her absolutely terrible, stale with fatigue and coffee from hours ago. Sherlock slides a hand up her waist, exhales into her mouth, palms Joan's breast over her tshirt, and Joan thinks yes, yes, exactly, feels herself hot and wanting, grinds down on Sherlock's thigh. Sherlock pants beneath her as Joan strips their shirts off, looks up at her with something like awe as Joan undresses her, leans in to kiss and bite Joan's breasts.

"Go down on me," Joan says. Sherlock digs her nails into the small of Joan's back, looking up at her; Joan threads her fingers through Sherlock's hair, pulls it away from her face, leans away, watching her eyes. "Okay?"

"Okay," Sherlock says, shaky, face flushed. She smiles. "Okay," and then she's pressing Joan into the bed, kissing down her stomach and hooking her fingers in the waistband of Joan's underwear, pulling them off, and then her tongue is pressed in Joan's cunt and Joan is seeing fucking stars, her hand buried in Sherlock's hair, pulling it hard enough to hurt. Sherlock's moans vibrate on her clit the harder she pulls, and Joan thinks, oh, there's that submissive streak, before Sherlock does something fucking incredible with her tongue and she's not thinking straight anymore. 

She pulls Sherlock up when she's come, kissing her face shining and slick, sliding her leg between her thighs. "Keep -- keep pulling my hair," Sherlock says, grinding down on her, and Joan takes a handful at the nape of her neck and pulls, hard, biting her throat where it shines pale, rubbing her nipple, and then Sherlock comes with a high keening noise, surprisingly loud, taut against Joan. Her face is bright red and she's sweating and her mouth is shiny from spit and Joan's cunt and she's never looked hotter in her life. They disentangle, smiling, high on each others' bodies; not an escape, but a discovery.

Sherlock runs her hand down Joan's arm, threads their fingers together; when Joan looks over she's smiling, finally, worn and wrecked-looking but peaceful. "Joan", she says, and her voice is sleepy and calm. Joan knows how she feels. The brownstone, the bees, the books: partners, truly, rather than physician and patient. Okay.

"Yes?"

"It's your turn to feed Clyde."


End file.
